18-Jan-2004 --
Again on the road to visit a confluence point, 20S43W, my friend Platao and me. We planned our trip from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, towards Major Ezequiel, at 120kms.

Once there we took the most logical road to reach our goal. When we where at 1.43 kms from Major Ezequiel we took a small road that seemed to take us quite close to the confluence but our first unpleasant surprise. The owner of the property did not allow us to cross by foot to the point. We tracked back to the last fork where there was another farm. The same way, the owner did not give us permission to cross his land. With no more options we drove back to Major Ezequiel to attempt from a different direction. It was a very arduous attempt. We climbed a big hill with heavy vegetation and could not make much progress in the middle of ‘bamboos’ and ‘samambaias’. It was almost noon when we arrived at 842 mts from the confluence and had, ahead of us, a bigger hill. We considered that we had no chance of success that day if we continued this approach. We decided to go back to the car, exhausted.

Back in Major Ezequiel we found two men on an ox-car and we related our challenge. Immediately one of them, Milton de Assis Braga (nickname Miltinho) offered to help us. Miltinho knows very well the region, a perfect guide. He took us through some farms on the opposite side of out failed attempt, which gave us a better chance. Not really the opposite side, according to the GPS we had 320m to the confluence but had to cross the same heavily vegetated hill

With renewed strength due to the proximity of the confluence we took off. We had great difficulties crossing the hill and frequent lose of signal.

We did not give up and finally, after almost two hours, we reached the confluence and celebrated. We returned to Major Ezequiel almost immediately since it was getting late for our trip.

We had a quick meal and celebrated with beer. Then we drove back to Belo Horizonte arriving after dark.